


In All of Time and Space

by theonlywaterintheforest



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Self Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:14:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1292713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theonlywaterintheforest/pseuds/theonlywaterintheforest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of Doctor Who ficlets, all prompted by random articles on Wikipedia. Sometimes I want to write, but need some inspiration. </p><p>LATEST FICLET: "'Til Death Tears Me Apart" - Clara's been with the Doctor long enough that a personal near-death experience doesn't faze her. She can't say the same about the deaths of others.<br/>Inspired by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sunbeam_(1912_film)">"The Sunbeam (1912)", an early silent movie</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Perfect Pair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Random Article:** [Castleton Jail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castleton_Jail), a centuries old jail built in a small town that couldn't have had had more than three cells.  
>  **Title:** "A Perfect Pair"  
>  **Summary:** The Doctor and River find themselves in jail...again.  
>  **Characters:** Eleventh Doctor, River Song  
>  **Rating:** Gen

"River, did you _really_ have to—"

The Doctor couldn't even finish his sentence. He was so infuriated. He growled deeply and tugged on his hair as he paced back in forth in the tiny jail cell. River ignored him, smiling at the primitive door. She touched the bars gently, running a finger down a rough, dirty, uneven piece of metal. 

"We really could get out of here so easily, you know. The hinges only requi—"

"How can you be talking about that right now?" he gasped, taking three large, heavy steps so he was beside her. He grasped onto her arm as he leaned into the metal bars. "We...we were just _arrested_ because _you_ broke a bottle _over the mayor's head_."

"Not my best arrest, I admit. It doesn't make for a very good story," she responded, ignoring his grip on her bicep. He rolled his eyes and gasped in disbelief. 

" _River_."

"And you should have been the one to hit him, Sweetie," she smirked. "Only you should be touching me like that."

The Doctor opened his mouth, but immediately shut it. River cocked her head to the side, waiting for a response. He licked his lips slowly, glaring back at her. "I happen to really like this little town. I've come here several times. I've always been on really good terms with the people here." 

"And now you aren't," River said matter-of-factly, and slowly unwrapped his fingers from her arm before walking over to the small, suspended bed and plopping down on it. She lightly patted the cushion beside her, but the Doctor slowly folded his arms over his chest in response. She shrugged her shoulders and laid down fully. She put her hands behind her head and smiled up at him, but he continued to just stand there, silent, glaring at her. His jaw was clenched tightly in anger. "Oh, lighten up, Dear. It's not like I killed anyone. 

"Once Amy and Rory realize we're no longer at that saloon, they'll bail us out."

"And how long will that take? They could have thought we just left! Went for a stroll or something."

"They've known me long enough to know the first place they should look is the local jail." She chuckled to herself, but the Doctor didn't think it was so funny. He rolled his eyes before turning back to the door. He gripped the bars and slouched.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. River wiggled into the stiff pad as she toed off her ankle boots, but the Doctor didn't move at all, save for a couple of sad sighs. 

He finally broke the silence, but didn't turn to look at her. 

"How many times is this for you, then?"

"How many times I've been jailed?"

"Yes."

She racked her brain. There was the time she stole a king's jewel collection and the time she told a race their god didn't exist and the time she decided to go skinny dipping on a very conservative planet...

"I honestly couldn't tell you," she responded as she sat up. "Five hundred times? A thousand? Maybe more?"

He made a soft "hmph!" noise as he shook his head.

"You're one to talk, Mister! This isn't the first time you've been arrested."

The Doctor straightened up, letting go of the bars. River could almost see the cogs turning in his brain. There was the time he broke a planet's oldest known artifact and the time he was believed to be a gunrunner and the time he just walked on a planet that didn't want him there...

He turned slowly to her and sighed. "Probably more than you, Dear."

"That's my Doctor."

He walked over to the bed and sat down facing her, beside her thighs, putting his right hand on the other side of her hips. He reached up with left hand and bopped her on the nose. "We really are trouble, aren't we?"

She smiled wide enough to flash teeth. "We make a perfect pair."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mention of an arrest for alleged gunrunning is a reference to "Caves of Androzani". There have been several nods to it in the recent run of Who, so I thought I'd continue the trend.


	2. In a Bad Land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Series of Doctor Who ficlets, all prompted by random articles on Wikipedia. Sometimes I want to write, but need some inspiration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Random Article:** [the Climate of North Dakota](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_North_Dakota)  
>  **Title:** "In a Bad Land"  
>  **Summary:** Clara wants to get away from the doom-and-gloom of late autumn, so the Doctor decides to take her to a dry, dusty place called North Dakida.  
>  **Characters:** Eleventh Doctor, Clara Oswald  
>  **Rating:** Gen

"Happy Wednesday," the Doctor smirked as Clara tossed her hood back. She could hear the rain from her coat dripping to the glass beneath her feet. She didn't even want to look at the state of her shoes.

"Could you have parked _a little bit closer_ to my flat?" she hissed as she slowly walked up the steps. 

He huffed from his position against the controls. He was leaning against them, hands latched around the edge of the panel, legs crossed in front of him. He was a bit sweaty, she realized as she got closer to him, with skin glistening and hair slick. The goggles—pushed back to his hairline—and disheveled shirt told her that he had been repairing the TARDIS again. 

"You could have waited to pick me up until you had a shower," Clara said as she walked past him so she could hang her soaked coat over the back railing. 

"Oi!" he cried, scrambling out of his stance so he could follow her. "I do not _smell_."

"You could still use one," she said after she placed her coat over the railing next to his waistcoat. After turning to him, she noticed a strange substance on his shoulder. She ran her fingers over it, then showed him the light green oily material now on her fingers with a look of disgust on her face. "You could still use one."

"How about I just change? You had said you wanted to go somewhere warm anyway." Clara had sent him a message saying how cold the late autumn had been, even breezier and rainier than usual. She could do with somewhere a bit warmer and far drier. 

"Whatever you want to do. I'm not your mother. I certainly can't force cleanliness on you," she said playfully as she crossed her arms in front of her chest and smirked.

He rolled his eyes as he undid the dusty plum bowtie. 

"How about North Dakida?" he asked as he approached the commands. "It's a province of a small planet with very little rainfall. It's sort of desert like, but there's vegetation, even grass. The big plus side is that the temperatures never differ more than two degrees, and it's sunny 243 of the 246 days of the year on average."

"Shops? Restaurants?" Clara asked, coming up beside him as he pulled up an image of a very pleasant looking city. There were a lot of thin tree-like plants, tall grasses, and flowers. The sky was a blue so rarely seen in the UK that she didn't even notice the small plaza off to the side with shops and cafés. The sky made the decision for her.

"I hope you have sunglasses in the wardrobe!" she cried as she ran up the stairs to the hallway.

"I'll take that as a yes?"

"After you change!"

* * *

The Doctor, wearing a fresh shirt, motioned out the door he had just opened, nodding his head. "After you."

"Why, thank you," Clara said as she pushed her sunglasses back up her nose and stepped outside.

She looked around for just two seconds before she turned around, which happened to be right into the Doctor's chest.

"This isn't North Dakida, is it."

"What? Of course it is!"

"Rolling hills? Slightly browned grass? Nothing for miles?!"

The Doctor looked over the top of Clara's head, squinting. Clara slowly put her hands up to her hips and tapped her foot impatiently. "Doctor..."

"No, I definitely know I asked for North Dakida. Wrong time, perhaps? Maybe this is the past? Maybe I went to the year 50,000 instead of 5,000?"

Clara quickly bolted around him and back into the TARDIS. She made her way to the control panel where he had input the destination, and yanked down on the moveable screen so it could be at her eye level. She stared at the controls for a second before remembering the set of commands that would bring up the climate information outside (this wasn't the first time she had to double check his readings). Just as she was raking over the information, he appeared at her side. "See? North Dakida, just as I said! Dry, little rainfall, low on the vegetation! Now, what year are we?"

"Dakota."

"What?" he said, not looking at her.

"Dakota. We're in North _Dakota_."

"What? Where is that? There's no North _Dakota_ anywhere in any universe."

"EARTH."

He snapped his head to her, but passed her a look like he wasn't going to fall for a joke. He let out a small laugh as he pulled the screen so it was directly in front of him. "There's no North Dakota on earth."

"United States," Clara said simply.

The Doctor let out a loud "HA!" that echoed off the walls. "I know the United States, Missy, and there's no...t-there's a North Dakota in the United States."

Clara tapped her nails on the panel as he slowly poked a map of the United States he had just brought up on the screen. He slowly turned his head back to her and smiled a meek little smile. "Oops?"

Clara then jogged back for the TARDIS door. The Doctor called over her shoulder, "I'm sorry! Just get back in here and we'll go to North Dakida! This will be the last time this happens! I promise!"

Clara looked back out at the soft rolling hills and browning grass in front of her, but that's not why she went back outside. She had a feeling, a gut feeling, that there was something here that she had missed. She turned on her heel to face the TARDIS, then walked to the right to see behind it.

"Doctor! We're staying! Get us stuff for a picnic! And don't forget the wine this time!"

* * *

Clara sighed for what was possibly the tenth time since they sat down on a thin, dry, grassy patch just outside the TARDIS. The Doctor handed her a refilled glass of claret, which she took without breaking her eyes off the view.

"You know, for as rubbish as you are at going where you want to go, you do make some fantastic mistakes."

They had landed right on a cliffside inside the Badlands, a 190-mile long stretch of red, yellow, white and brown banded rock, eroded away with time to create rough, waving, mountain-like formations. The sun was setting, and the sky was shining in reds and oranges, making the rock formations before them almost glow in the light.

"I'll take that as a compliment," he said as he recorked the bottle. 

"It's beautiful," she said without thinking, grasping the glass tightly in both hands. The sun would be gone any time, she knew, and she needed to take in this view while she still could.

"It is. I'd put it down in my top...100 sunsets."

This knocked Clara out of her trance. She snapped her head to him and scowled. "Top 100, really. Top 100. This is only in the top 100."

"When you've lived as long as I have, you see a lot of sunsets," he said with a smirk, bringing his own glass back to his lips. He took a sip, and grimaced as he swallowed deeply. "Seriously, how did my former selves like this stuff?"

Clara laughed lightly and turned back to the view before her. It was pleasantly warm, a light breeze licked at her face, the air was fresh and clean. She had the view, she had the sunset, she had the Doctor, and she had a glass of wine. This was exactly what she needed. This could beat North Dakida any day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This is the image of the Badlands I used to write the final scene.](http://www.nps.gov/badl/photosmultimedia/images/RikkFlohrBadlands-Brilliant-Sunset-CROP.jpg) I can attest to its beauty. I've been to the Badlands at sunset before, almost this same spot, and I essentially had a "religious experience". I was fifteen years old and crying with abandon. I regret nothing.
> 
> I'm an American, so I based Clara's knowledge of North Dakota off [this wonderful exercise where someone had Brits label a map of the States.](http://www.buzzfeed.com/robinedds/its-thanksgiving-so-we-asked-some-brits-to-label-the-us-stat) I was pleasantly surprised how many people knew where North Dakota was located!


	3. Twenty Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted from Wikipedia's random articles. Sometimes I need a push of inspiration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Random Article:** [Vials](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vials)  
>  **Title:** "Twenty Times"  
>  **Summary:** When Amy gets injured, she has to take her medicine. Twenty times. In a row.  
>  **Characters:** Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond  
>  **Rating:** Gen

"Again!" the Doctor cried, quickly throwing Amy's chin upward. Her neck ached and she felt like she could feel her brain slamming against the back of her skull. This was the twelfth time her head had been tossed back.

"Doctor...please!"

Her mouth was flooded with a taste so foul, so vulgar...

"SWALLOW!" he cried as Amy went to spit it out. He slammed a hand to the back of her head and another to her chin, preventing her from opening her mouth. She moaned, holding the vile substance from sliding down her throat. "Amelia, you _have to!_ "

Amy shook her head as much as she could in his grasp, tears stinging at her eyes.

"We have just eight more and I promise you, you'll have less to taste if you just swallow!"

Amy gulped and closed her eyes tighter. She knew she had to swallow. She didn't have much of a choice.

Death was only minutes away, after all.

"Amelia, Amelia, Amelia—"

And she swallowed deeply, letting the thick amber liquid cascade down her throat. 

The Doctor let go of her head and she started coughing, a thick yet dry hack that nearly sent her over. She braced herself on the bars behind her head as tears freely flowed from her eyes. It was then that she could start to feel a dreadful, painful numbing start to prick at her muscles. "Doctor, it's...it's starting," she said with panic in her voice, rippling her words. She felt the Doctor put a hand on her knee.

"Amelia, please, for me. C'mon."

She opened her wet eyes to see him on his knees beside her, holding another vial at the ready. "Same as always, you just did this—"

"No."

"Please, you're dying!"

A tear ran down the Doctor's cheek, which sent a dagger through Amy's heart. It was a worse pain that the pins-and-needles feeling that was rapidly coursing through her body. She nodded quickly, and threw her head back as she closed her eyes. She swallowed much more quickly this time, taking only five seconds of coaxing before opening her throat.

"That's my girl. Seven more."

Amy didn't open her eyes as she prepared herself for another dose. She took a tighter hold on the control room bars behind her and dug her feet at the glass beneath her.

"Six," the Doctor whispered as he poured another into her mouth. She cringed as the taste took over, and leaned forward to gag. The Doctor lurched forward, grabbing her chin just in time. She started to sob. He just made soft cooing noises, and ran his other hand down her throat to encourage a swallow. "Almost three-quarters of the way done, Amelia. That's it. You can do it. My superhero."

As she swallowed she could hear a small sound of happiness catch in his throat. She couldn't let him be so excited. "I can't, Doctor...I just can't. I'm going to throw up." 

"That's why we have to take them in so many small doses. You need a small window in between each or you'll certainly throw up," he said, and she could feel his breath on her face. "You can't throw up. You need all of the vials. All of them. You have to push through, Amelia."

"Twenty...such a large number," she whispered. She noticed she was starting to shake. 

"I know...I know. But you're almost there. C'mon. Open up."

With extreme concentration, she worked to push down the desire to vomit. When she felt 100 percent sure she could open her mouth without consequence, she tilted her head back. The vial was poured into her mouth so quickly she didn't have time to set up a defense, and it basically went straight into her throat.

She gagged hard as the Doctor made a noise of encouragement. "Yes! Again!"

She took a deep breath and opened up again. She could hear him fumbling to crack open another vial, but soon she had her seventeenth dose. She gagged again the second the liquid hit her tongue, and some of it dribbled down her chin. The Doctor was there, though, and ran his thumb aggressively down her chin before running it over her bottom lip. "Lick. You have to. You have to have all of it."

She sobbed out loud as she dragged her tongue over her lower lip and slowly opened her eyes (a process that was getting harder to do by the second). She watched him rip the top off a thin plastic vial with his teeth. "Three left."

Three. She couldn't. No.

Her stomach churned. Her esophagus burned. Her muscles told her just to give up. Accept death. Die. Die here. That'd be so much better than three more vials of the foulest thing she had ever tasted in her entire life.

She let herself fall to the floor without trying to catch herself. Her head bounced off the glass but she barely felt it; she concentrated more on trying to get away from the Doctor, get away from those vials. She could no longer move her toes, she realized, as she tried to push her way across the glass.

"Amelia! Please!" He was over her, trying to lift her, but she fought with all she could muster. She had to crawl away so she could die, die alone, die without seeing the pain on his face...

"No," she whispered, trying to claw at him. With fingers that were stiffening rapidly, this was not successful.

"You have to! You have minutes left! I can't let you die, Amelia Pond! Not now!"

He lifted her from the ground and set her on his lap. "Amelia, hold onto me. Just...put all of your pain from this into me. Bruise me, cut me, I don't care. I just need you to take these as fast as you can, okay?"

One hand at a time she wrapped her hand around the braces at his chest. She then sighed and tipped her head back as far as she could. He poured in another vial, and she found herself unprepared for that taste. Her hands, which had been tightly holding onto the red braces, were now on his shoulders, digging her nails deep into the muscle. The Doctor didn't even flinch. He whispered encouragement in her ear as she slowly swallowed. "Again, c'mon, almost done..." 

She swore when she heard him opening another vial behind her back, but she obediently raised her chin. Another pour, another deep swallow. 

He gasped. "One left! Move a little for me! Move a knee, shake your head, dig into my shoulder mor—OWW."

"Just...go..." Amy pleaded, bracing herself for the last anti-toxin. When it hit her tongue, she wanted to gag again, but he was ready. As he had twice before, he held tightly onto her chin and the back of her head.

"Swallow."

No.

"Amelia..."

No.

"This is the last one."

No.

"PLEASE."

She screwed her face up tighter than it had been before and swallowed the last vial.

"Oh! OH!" the Doctor cried, wrapping his arms around the rigid Amy for the deepest hug she ever had (or what she thought was the deepest hug she ever had. It's hard to tell when you're mainly numb). He sobbed loudly into the shoulder of her leather coat as she felt the start of relief start to wash at the edges of her muscles. 

"Doctor, I—"

"Please tell me you're regaining some feeling."

She thought about it, analyzing different parts of her body. She tried to wiggle her toes, and they did move a little bit. "I can feel...my toes...for the first time...in minutes."

"Oh god, Amy!"

A sense of relief tumbled over with those words. He said Amy. He called her Amy. Not Amelia. Amy. He called her Amelia when he was concerned. He was no longer concerned.

_But he still has reason to be concerned _, Amy thought as she slowly looked down at the glass beneath them. Blood was smeared all over the glass, showing exactly every dig of the heel and every sudden slide on the knees. She pulled away from the hug to stare down at his front. Even the bow tie was stained with her blood.__

__"So, you're going to let me die from bleeding out, yeah?" she said with as much sarcasm as she could muster, realizing her weakness wasn't just from the poison._ _

__He quickly looked down between them and gasped. He essentially dropped her to the ground as he scrambled backward and onto his feet so he could race to the other side of the TARDIS commands. Amy just reached down slowly for the left side of her leather coat, cautiously pulling back the flap that was stuck to her tee shirt to expose a ten centimeter long gash over her abs. She stared at it and the dark redness of the blood caked around it, not noticing the bloodied Doctor back at her side, ripping open a package of gauze._ _

__"I...I got slashed. With a sword. A poisoned sword."_ _

__"Yes, strangely, less important," he said simply as he opened the jacket up wider so he had better access to the wound. He pressed the gauze as hard as he could. "Blood is easier to acquire than muscular ability, I'm afraid."_ _

__She hissed in the pain of the pressure he was applying, but she was glad for it. That meant she was quickly regaining muscular ability. "So, I'm going to be fine?"_ _

__He tilted her back so she was lying down on the glass. He smiled as he ran his hand through a stray curl. "Don't move, we'll head to a hospital so they can get you stitched up."_ _

__"Doctor, you didn't answer me."_ _

__"Of course you're going to be fine, Pond," he said as he stood up and walked to the controls. "Actually, no. You'll be better than fine. You'll be amazing."_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some inspiration came from the "burnt onions" blood clot solution from Rebel Flesh/Almost People. They were treating it like that was disgusting, but I know that is far from the worst tasting thing.


	4. 'Til Death Tears Me Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Series of Doctor Who ficlets, prompted from the Random Articles on Wikipedia. Sometimes you get ten articles about amateur sports teams in a row, sometimes you get an article about a movie whose writer you _really_ want to question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Random Article:** ["The Sunbeam (1912)"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sunbeam_\(1912_film\)), an early silent film where the characters, umm, "move on" very quickly.  
>  **Title:** 'Til Death Tears Me Apart  
>  **Summary:** Clara's been with the Doctor long enough that a personal near-death experience doesn't faze her. She can't say the same about the deaths of others.  
>  **Rating:** Gen

After all of the misfortune they had encountered in the last day and a half, Clara didn’t think it was out of the question to feel threatened by a building. The Doctor felt otherwise.

“It’s just a building, Clara. There are plenty of them like this on earth.”

She scrunched her nose as she clicked the heels of her low boots together. “Are there really, though?”

The Doctor rolled his eyes with extra flourish, throwing his hands in the air for good measure. “ _Yes._ Plenty of big, abandoned factories—“

“Without windows?”

“ _—without windows_ that are surrounded by other abandoned buildings. Just like earth. C’mon.”

The TARDIS had unexpectedly crash-landed on Baxar, leaving them covered in bumps and bruises. Clara nearly drank a poisonous beverage. The Doctor was close to getting his throat slit. They had escaped two bombings (not meant for them) and one sniper shooting (meant for them). She didn’t think it was out of the question to be threatened by a building. Not here. Not this time.

When it appeared she was truly rooted to the spot, the Doctor growled loudly and walked up to the quiet building. He turned to her to make sure she could see the exasperation on his face and then rapped his knuckles on the nondescript grey surface of the wall. Nothing happened: no gunfire, no shapeshifting walls, no calling beasts from hell to their location. “See? Nothing to worry about. Just a normal building. Just like I said.”

When the Doctor went to open the flat steel door, Clara finally moved. “Wait! I know…I know it’s dumb of me to be perplexed—“

“You are right about that,” she heard him grumble.

“—but there is definitely something off here. I can feel it.”

He slowly turned to her and sighed. “It’s just a bar, Clara.”

“I know. You’ve said." 

“So…it’s safe. C’mon.”

With apprehension, Clara took five steps. The Doctor’s shoulders slunk. She could feel the irritation radiating off him. “Do not make me carry you in there.”

“You will do no such thing,” she snapped.

“Don’t think I won’t,” he threatened. He aggressively pointed to the ground before him, beckoning her to his side. “I’ll throw you over my shoulder and will let you kick and scream like the wee babe you are.”

She tightened her arms, which were tightly wrapped around her waist. “Can’t you just leave me out here?”

It took him only a few large steps to close the gap between them. Hissing through his teeth, the Doctor growled, “Absolutely not, Clara Oswald. I don’t know how you could forget this already, but someone has tried to kill us several times since we agreed to help the Garthan find the antidote. It is much safer for you in there.” 

Clara rocked back onto her heels. “Then why does this place make me feel incredibly anxious?”

“Because you’re a simple, silly human with a pudding brain who lets emotions and irrational behavior get in the way of logic,” he spat quickly before taking Clara’s hand and dragging her across the dusty road toward the bar’s unassuming door.

Images of the interior flashed through her mind. She pictured a large, dimly lit room. No one in it but a regular—the Siriz, the man they were looking for—and a bartender. Questionable black grime over everything. Thick drinks that look like they’re made of puréed amphibians. A curious smell that makes her eyes water. 

She was surprised to find this wasn’t the case, not in the slightest. The Doctor let go of her hand the second they were both inside, and he made his way through a thick mass of people surrounding a bar lit in bright red and orange neon. Clara just stood there in amazement. It wasn’t just a bar, it was a club, and it was packed. Every shiny modern table was full of patrons wearing next to nothing, drinking sparkling or glowing drinks in large, crystal clear glasses. There wasn’t a dance floor, but some people were dancing in the aisles anyway, moving rhythmically to a beat similar to the deeper house tracks she heard back on earth. The energy was electric and Clara was sure she looked shocked. This wasn’t what she had been expecting at all.

It was when she noticed the Doctor across the way, waving for her to join him, that she was knocked out of her trance. Being short and small it took her twice as long to get to the far edge of the club as it had for the Doctor, and she looked a bit frazzled once she appeared at his side. She hastily ran her fingers through her disheveled hair and flattened her skirt.

“What took you so long?” the Doctor bellowed over the loud music, ushering her into one side of the large circular booth. He forcefully pushed her down into a seat next to a female Baxaran, who was tall and slender, with glittering emerald green skin that looked like it might crinkle under her finger if she touched it. “Make conversation, okay?”

As he slid into the other side of the booth, next to a male Baxaran with teal-colored crinkle-skin, Clara noticed something she hadn’t noticed at the entrance. She had been right about one thing in her vision of this place: something _reeked._ It took her breath away. It was potent and sweet, but sickly at the same time. Musty and almost toxic. It reminded her of rotting fruit, but it was almost like bad milk as well. 

She held up her hand to help staunch back a gag. The Baxaran beside her grabbed the ahold of the hovering hand, clasping it from the outside. As Clara pushed the rising bile in her throat back down to her stomach, she turned to the woman slightly. “Hi, hello, sorry. It’s just…”

“Hello!” the Baxaran cooed loudly, flashing a set of long, pointy teeth as she clenched and unclenched her grasp on Clara’s hand over and over again in greeting. On any other race the teeth would have startled her, but it worked so well with their angular faces that they were almost beautiful. “I am Ritan, Tarsk’s wife.” 

“I’m sorry, who?” Clara realized she was still holding hands with Ritan, but did nothing to end it.

“The Siriz, of course.”

“Oh! Right. Sorry. I’m new here,” Clara apologized quickly before hastily adding, “Do you smell that?”

The smile on the stunning woman’s face fell and she hastily removed her hand from Clara’s. “Smell what, dear?” 

She couldn’t believe that the woman sitting next to her couldn’t smell the same offensive odor. “That smell. You can’t smell it? I don’t know how to describe it to you, I’ve only been on the planet for just over a day and, well, we’ve been rather busy—“

“This is how this place normally smells,” Ritan assured her, running a long, shiny hand down the side of Clara’s face. “Drink? I can call over Jacax. He always comes to our table the second I call him.”

The drinks were not gelatinous nor did they appear to be made out of blended frogs. The glowing lilac-colored drinks were uncommonly light and tremendously bubbly, like an overly-carbonated champagne made from air. It even tasted a bit like champagne, but there was a definite citrus-like quality to it. Out of all of the alien drinks she had during her time with the Doctor, this was by far her favorite. She made a mental note to ask if she could get some before they left the planet. 

The drinks were fantastic, the company was pleasant, and the music was enjoyable. Clara felt like her original apprehension about the place was unwarranted after all, but she’d never admit that to the Doctor. If only she could pin down that strange odor…

As Clara and Ritan’s third round arrived at the table, a fight broke out beside them. A sapphire-colored Baxaran male threw his drink in the face of an alien whose race was unknown to Clara before flipping the table. The unfortunate victim fell backward out of his chair, cracking his head off the edge of her party’s booth. Clara shrieked and jumped sideways, almost landing in Ritan’s lap. The Baxaran slowly walked around the upended table and stood above the clearly concussed alien on the bar’s floor.

Clara noticed that nothing had changed in the volume level. Whenever she had experienced a bar fight, basically the entire place had taken notice and had either started shouting or had stopped talking all together. People would stop dancing or would rush to either join in the brawl or try to end it. No one moved. It was like no one but her booth even noticed. 

She stopped analyzing the crowd’s lack of response once the Baxaran removed a tiny blaster gun from a pouch attached to his baggy trousers. Almost paralyzed in fear, Clara moved her head just enough to get a good glimpse at the Doctor as she was shocked that he had taken no action. He was watching the events with his breath held and his eyes darting from attacker to Clara and back again, but kept his tongue and his seat.

“You insulted my family!” Clara barely heard the attacker over the loud music. “I do not take lightly to such insults, Crahhal.”

“I thought you would appreciate the information!” the man named Crahhal yelled. He tried to sit upright, but immediately collapsed back down to the floor, where he was tangled up awkwardly in the small aisle. “I would want to know that my sister was sleeping with a member of the government! I would want to stop her dishonor before the public found out about such a scandal. I was doing you a favor!”

“You speak in lies, old friend,” the Baxaran said calmly. Clara thought the blaster was just a threat and that he was going to let Crahhal recover, but when the injured man raised his hand for help, the Baxaran fired his tiny weapon, searing an unusually large hole in the man’s chest. Clara’s throat went instantly dry. No one had done anything. No one. The staff, the patrons, the people at the flipped table, Ritan and the Siriz, and most shocking of all: the Doctor. She gulped as it hit her fully. He could be a bit heartless and sometimes it seemed he turned a blind eye to the violence, but he was usually so ready to try to sway someone from a rushed, senseless decision. She knew he could have done something here. Crahhal could have gotten up and ran if the Doctor had just turned the Baxaran toward him and tried to convince him to drop the weapon. Instead he just sat there, totally calm. As she turned her shaking self toward the Doctor, he took a small, innocent sip of his deep blue drink. They made eye contact for just a second before he turned back to the Siriz and continued their conversation like they had never been interrupted in the first place.

Ritan ran a soothing hand along the base of Clara’s neck. Normally she would be uncomfortable with a touch so intimate from a stranger, but she was way too shocked to do anything about it. She was torn up inside, and it was getting worse by the second. The murderer was calling over a server to replace the beverage he had thrown in Crahhal’s face. The other people at the table were laughing about something as they righted the table. The patrons were all still dancing, unfazed by the events. Some even stepped on Crahhal’s still form as they made their way down the aisleway. The callous reactions to a man’s sudden and violent death rattled her to her core.

“Is something wrong, dear? You look upset,” Ritan cooed, leaning in to press a kiss to Clara’s hair. Again, she didn’t care about the intimate touch—in fact, she barely noticed. She was now staring at the Doctor through watery eyes, hoping he would notice the dagger-filled glares she was sending him.

After about ten seconds the Doctor turned back to pick up his drink and he saw his companion. He kept eye contact with her during the drawn-out gulp of his deep blue liquor, which he finished entirely. The Siriz let out a hearty “Ho!” and whirled his hand in the air, beckoning for another refill. 

“There was nothing I could do,” the Doctor said so softly Clara almost didn’t hear him. He didn’t divert his gaze at all, like she thought he might. Well, like she hoped he would: it would tell her that he felt guilty for not doing anything when he could have prevented a man from dying a senseless death. However, the Doctor was steadfast and Clara knew he meant what he said, even though she couldn’t understand why.

“You could have done _something,”_ she finally hissed. To her right, a group of five laughing women all stepped on Crahhal’s body as they made their way back to their table. “A man died for a stupid reason and no one is doing anything about it. No one.”

“It wasn’t a stupid reason!” Ritan shrieked with a hint of laughter on her words. “His family was insulted!”

The Doctor and his Impossible Girl ignored their Baxaran hosts. “If I had done anything, more people would have died,” the Doctor responded simply, finally breaking eye contact to look down at the table.

“How do you know that?” Clara growled. “You could have moved the weapon. Aimed it toward the ceiling. Everyone else could have pinned him down during the struggle.”

The Siriz threw an arm around the Doctor and shook him once. “My old friend here is right. More people would have died—there would have been chaos and there are far too many people in here for it to have ended well.

“And like my darling wife said, the man had insulted his family. What a grave mistake.”

“It’s not earth, Clara. What works there doesn’t work here,” the Doctor explained. He sounded tired. “You don’t interfere here. Also, they don’t treat death like humans do. It’s not the tragedy you’re used to.”

Another couple stepped on Crahhal’s corpse. Clara picked up the Doctor’s new drink as it arrived at the table and downed the strong, thick liquid in one go. He eyed her cautiously for a minute, awaiting her response. “You could have saved him,” was the only thing she could come up with at the moment as both the situation and the strong booze picked at her bit-by-bit. 

“No, I couldn’t.”

Two male Baxarans noticed Crahhal for the first time after one nearly tripped over him. As Clara jammed her eyes shut, she heard one of them drunkenly bellow,” That’s the third one in this area!”

“When’s that one guy being moved?” his friend asked. “He has to be near his time.”

“There are three on this side and one on the south wall!” one laughed lightly, as if he was talking about a pleasant change in the weather. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen four in here at once before.”

And they went on their way.

Clara slowly opened her eyes to find the Doctor giving her a sympathetic glance. It almost reminded her of her first Doctor. She wanted him to comfort her like he had before, holding her face in his hands and cooing her back to calm and hugging her so hard she thought she would burst.

He didn’t.

She swallowed thickly. “’The third one’? ‘Four in here at once’?”

In a rare show of compassion, the Doctor gingerly reached across the table and took one of her hands in his. He said nothing. Just squeezed.

“Ho ho, you didn’t tell her, Doctor?” the Siriz chuckled, elbowing the Doctor in the arm. He didn’t flinch. He kept his unwavering eye contact on her and for that she was grateful. 

“Oh, you’re so fresh, darling!” Ritan sang, tapping her fingers on Clara’s shoulder. 

The Siriz leaned over the table. “That smell you were complaining about earlier is from four deceased patrons— _former_ patrons. The body of the recently deceased must be left untouched for seven days to allow the soul to fully escape. It cannot be tarnished by the dirty hands of those who still walk the planet. We are unworthy of touching a piece of the soul. It is a holy thing, as I’m sure you’re aware.” He leaned back and took a lazy sip of his glittery black beverage. 

“They’ve had a particularly bad week in here, it would seem!” Ritan laughed.

“So, they just leave the bodies here. They do nothing to them,” Clara said to the Doctor. 

“They do nothing,” he reaffirmed, squeezing her hand tighter.

“Of course, after the seven day period is up, we gather the body and have a proper death ceremony, complete with the dedication of the soul and the Feast of the Righteous Leader,” the Siriz interrupted. “We’re not _animals,_ my dear.”

It sure felt like it to her.

During the rest of their eight day stay on the Baxar, Clara never hesitated again. She knew nothing else they would encounter could rattle her to the core quite like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Seriously, I really want to know why the author of the movie that inspired this piece just let the recently deceased chill out in the background. I do not get it.)


End file.
